DEATH AND BEYOND

visions and revelations of the Lord. While in vision, he was not aware of what was happening to his body. Isaiah and Daniel also saw into heaven, and it would seem that Paul’s visions of heaven were of the same type of those of other prophets. It was so real to him that he was unsure whether perhaps his body had actually been there or whether it was an experience in his mind’s eye. If Paul had been actually taken to heaven, he came back again, so he had not gone there in death. If he had not gone there literally, it still does not prove that we have a soul that lives independently of our bodies, for Paul was alive at the time he wrote and it

had happened over fourteen years previously. Did Paul have a corpse lying on the earth while his spirit went to the third heaven in vision? This is not a verse that can be used to support an immortal soul.

Philippians 1:20-24 speaks of Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ. Does this not prove an immortal soul? Please explain!
The Bible principle of interpretation is that scripture must be compared with scripture. Where there are individual ambiguous scriptures, these must be compared with the majority on the same subject. Without doing this, hasty conclusions can be arrived at that mislead and distort the truth of the Bible as a whole.
This text is often seen as the strongest text in favour of an immortal soul that leaves the body at death and goes to be with God.
If one reads this verse in isolation, it might be possible to understand it in that light, but it has to be compared with all the other scriptures that Paul wrote about death, the sleep in the grave and the resurrection. In view of other texts that are simple clear and uncomplicated, this verse must be interpreted in its wider context. Paul is speaking of life and death. He has been beaten by a mob in Jerusalem and now he is in Rome as a captive, with a major trial imminent.

Paul now says that he kept back nothing from those to whom he wrote that was profitable for them, and ‘I have not shunned to declare to you the full counsel of God.’ He said this with total openness. There is nothing whatever in his epistles that teaches that we have an immortal soul now and so we should not put this meaning into these few words. Paul’s writings comprise almost one third of the New Testament and include about 100 chapters in all his letters. The view of the immortal soul is just not found in these hundreds of words.

‘I am in a strait betwixt two.’ Paul speaks here and elsewhere of bringing glory to God by what happens in his body. He will give glory to God if he continues to live. He will also bring glory to God if he is called upon to die a martyr’s death. He can do more to help the new Christians if he lives on but he is tired and he is prepared to die. Paul is quite clear that he will not go to be with the Lord when he dies, for he explains at length elsewhere, as words of comfort, that we meet the Lord when the trumpet shall sound and the voice of the Archangel is heard, accompanied by a shout and the coming of Christ Himself with all the angels of heaven. This does not happen at death, it happens when the heavens depart like a scroll and therefore there is an interim period of nothingness,

which seems for the dead, as but a moment. Here is what Paul has already said about when we meet the Lord. He would not now contradict other very clear statements that he has made.
Romans 8:23. At the redemption of the body. 1 Corinthians 5:5. In the day of the Lord Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15:51-55. At the last trump. 2 Corinthians 5:2. When we are clothed with our house from heaven.

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